Trying, but failing, to fly
Archived posts from this Category
Monday, 28th February 2011
Posted by Geoff on 01 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly, Work
Geoff writes: a morning of working, then we went out to fly. All the indicators we normally use were giving SE around Santa Brigida, but when we got there it actually had a lot of north in it. We waited around for a while, but finally gave up and came back home to work. The day did get worse, with a front coming in, though when we went out at first it was a great sky.
Some people from the Midland Gliding Club are currently in Jaca, in the Pyrenees. Today, they got in wave, to FL195 – over 20,000′, and -40C!
Sunday, 30th January 2011
Posted by Judith on 31 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
Turns out that the flying conditions at Santa Brigida yesterday were really good. Big, smooth thermals and lots of sky to play with. It didn’t rain until the early evening. A phone call to Marc confirmed that people were already flying at Santa Brigida this morning. I had to take my parents to the airport at mid-day, so instead of Geoff going off on his own and my meeting him there, we went all together in one car.
The sky towards the mountains wasn’t stunning and when we got to Amer, we could see all the pilots sitting in the bar, rather than on the hill. We drove to the landing anyway, but it started spitting soon after. Since the forecast was for deteriorating conditions, we headed home, into some serious rain.
We spent a lovely evening at Debi’s, who cooked us her signature dish of rabbit and meatballs. Delicious.
Sunday, 16th January 2011
Posted by Judith on 16 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
We can see Coma Negra from our house and it looks only a couple of kilometers away. It’s much further, and at over 1500m high, with a long windy road to it, it takes over an hour to get to it, and then you have to walk up. We haven’t been often, and when we have, we’ve barely flown, for one reason or another. Quini and Amadeu are the local experts and we have asked them to let us know when they go there. We bumped into Quini at Bellmunt yesterday and he was planning a day out at Coma Negra for today. We didn’t need to be asked twice. The meeting place for Coma Negra is in the cafe at the bottom of our cliff. We met Amadeu, Quini, Edu, Jordi, Alfons and respective partners and kids and headed up the road and up the mountain.
At the parking it was off to the west, but very light. I was expecting a top-to-bottom, which isn’t too bad; it takes a while to fly down, you have to cross a couple of ridges and then have to negotiate a steep valley landing, so it’s more interesting than your average plummet. Once we had all got to the top, it was much windier and way off to the west, so we decided to wait and see. We would have stayed on the west face, but there’s an accepted wisdom here that the sun will bring it on, so you just go to the normal launch.
When it got to 1.30pm, and despite the wind picking up, Amadeu decided to take off. With it being off, he had a 60% collapse just after getting airborne, which we thought didn’t bode well. He headed straight to the landing field and it was a rock n’ roll ride to the valley. Alfons was next. He also went straight out and down. By this time we had serious doubts about wanting to fly. It took them ages to get down. Quini went next and went straight up, like being popped out of a champagne bottle. He turned left (east) and went screaming downwind, and once he turned back, he was basically stationary. He kept going up, still trying to go forward to the landing area, but he was drifting further and further east. It’s almost certain he was in wave. There aren’t many safe (or easy) places to land between Coma Negra and Oix, or Coma Negra and our valley, so we were willing him to turn and run. To us it seemed as if he had reached El Mont, so we were a little reassured, but then we saw him sink and we knew he had gone down in Sadernes… not a good place to be.
Meanwhile, it was getting gustier, and we were not inclined to fly, but our lift had gone, as all the cars had been driven down to the landing. We waited it out until 4pm, but the wind was still too strong and the direction too far off. We tried to get in touch with Quini, but there was no reply from his mobile so we were getting more worried about him all the time.
Eventually, we packed up and walked back down and Amadeu came back to pick us up. We did finally get a call from Quini and he had landed high up a mountain in one of the only landable fields in Sadernes, near St Aniol. He didn’t have his speed bar connected and was at the mercy of the wind, but he said he wasn’t too worried. With his height, he felt he could always reach a suitable landing field.
So, another time at Coma Negra and another time not flying. It’s a stunning place, but it would be nice if our luck there changed.
Saturday, 8th January 2011
Posted by Judith on 09 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly, Walking
The Parapent Bellmunt group announced a Breakfast & Fly day, starting with refreshments at the monastery at 11am. Having looked at the weather, I thought it would be far too windy, but we decided to head out anyway and go walking if flying wasn’t a possiblity. It became clear as soon as we opened the door that we probably wouldn’t fly today, but you never know… Bellmunt is in a different valley system after all.
We got there later than expected. On the ground in Torrello the wind was less, but the flags were showing it too far off to the west. At the landing field it was top end and predictably, it was blown out at the top. We decided to do a walk along the spine of the ridge, then drop down into the valley behind and then have a steep walk back up to the monastery. With temperatures at the coast predicted to be 20°C, it was pleasantly warm even at 1250m and we were soon shedding jackets and jumpers. I was glad it’s been dry for a while. Some of the path goes over slippy stones right on the edge. Well, both edges… it not so much a spine back as a razor back. Big drops either side if you slip.
We had a picnic at the end of the ridge in the sunshine and then dropped down into the shady north side. The walk took about three hours and we had a coffee in the monastery on our return. It was still far too windy to fly…
Wednesday, 5th January 2011
Posted by Judith on 06 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Party, party, party..., Trying, but failing, to fly
The forecast was very contradictory today. Meteocat was forecasting for the holiday (talking the weather up), and promised sunshine during the afternoon. However, the synoptic promised a warm front during the day. Mike was keen to give it a try, and also wanted to pass on a glider to me, so we decided to give it a go. Plan A was to go to Sant Pere de Rodes, which was sunny in the morning, but an 11am look at the web cams showed grey cloud and not even a single shadow on the ground. No shadow = no thermals. El Mont had some low cloud sitting at its base, but we were confident it would burn off. Contrary to the forecast, there was blue sky from here to the high Pyrenees. Mike crossed the border from France (which was in fog), and said the coast was brightish. At that point the top of El Mont became visible, so we decided to go there.
As we drove up, it became increasingly cloudy and we drove through a layer of the stuff. On reaching the summit, the launch was clagged in, but over on the north side it was mostly clear, with the cloud lying beneath us. The mountains to the north were visible, with Canigó, at the base of which Mike lives, looking only a few km away.
It looked like it could clear, so a walk around, bit of weeding the launch and a pomegranate later, we were still waiting. At 2.30pm the wind was picking up, the cloud was getting thicker and we got hungry, so we decided to bin the day and have a sandwich in sunny Besalú. What we didn’t realise was that the cloud had filled in below us and far from being sunny, it had developed into a grey, murky day.
Mike’s never been to Besalú and we nearly got him to attempt the climb up to the high chairs on the wall, but then we chickened out and got him to stop. A nice sandwich later we said our farewells, hoping for a better day soon.
It’s Reyes Magos here today, so in the evening the three wise men came on horseback in a procession to our village, followed by a truck full of presents for the kids. It’s the Spanish Christmas, so all the kids go crazy. And actually it’s quite nice for the big kids too…
Monday, 3rd January 2011
Posted by Geoff on 03 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
Geoff writes: a nice sunny day, we did some work this morning then went out to fly. The forecast was good, and, when we got to Santa Brigida, the wind was on the hill, in spite of being north almost all the way there. But it was just a bit too strong and gusty (and thermic), and didn’t seem like it would be much fun. We waited a while, confident it would eventually drop, but got bored after an hour, and came home to finish off some work.
Monday, 27th December 2010
Posted by Judith on 28 Dec 2010 | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
My sister and family were leaving at 7am, so we were up from about 6am, saying goodbye. I went back to bed, but didn’t get much sleep. We left my parents at about 10am and headed home to get our gliders and go out to Santa Brigida. A south forecast, so nothing guaranteed. There seemed little wind on the way, and the direction was variable, so it was anyone’s guess what the wind would be doing on site.
When we arrived, it seemed very west on the ground, but the flag on top showed south. We waited a little while in the landing field, while a few gusts came through, and had a snooze to make up for lost sleep in the morning.
After waking up it still seemed south, so we drove up. There were wave bars ahead and behind and the westerly component was evident, but it was only after walking behind the take-off to take a picture of the sky that I realised what was actually happening. The gust were coming up the side of the hill, very strongly. This meant that the warmed rock and trees were bringing it on to the point where you thought that it was actually ok to fly, but in reality, the wind was actually more like 110 degrees off. It wasn’t safe to fly, so we read our books some more and then went to Fonter to get fizzy water from the spring. It was probably flyable elsewhere, if we had bothered to drive to somewhere else.